What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

The two characters are practically mirror images of each other, only Larsa is twelve. I don't understand your preoccupation with one and dismissiveness towards another.

I agree the previous senate shouldn't be responsible for the new Garlemald either - by all accounts what we've heard about them is little better than what we've seen so far from its rulers - but I don't really have an answer to your claim that Garlemald without a monarchy is automatically boring. To each their own, I suppose? I hope XVI gives you what you're looking for.

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Perhaps because one is more intelligent and less preachy than the other? Larsa's ultimate goal was peace. Not regime change. Instead of toppling enemy leaders left and right he worked together with people like Princess Ashe, both of which later became leaders of their respective nations. It made for a far more palatable story than having nation after nation bend over backwards in order to conform to real world ideals - for which Alphinaud is the mouthpiece.

So far FFXVI does indeed seem to be what I am looking for, a fantasy story with mature elements that respects the player's intelligence. A revenge plot driven by a protagonist who doesn't have the haircut of a schoolgirl, set in a world with a complex political situation like in Ivalice. Needless to say there is a sector of FFXIV fans who will find that the story goes over their heads, seeing as how there are unlikely to be any Uber Eats scenes or college living moments.

Hopefully now that the writing for FFXVI is done, some of them can rejoin the FFXIV team and save the plot from the current direction it's spiralling down into. A playerbase that needs so many breaks in the tension and action of the plot maybe just maybe would be better off playing a Persona game instead of a Final Fantasy game? Over there they can date and hang out with friends to their hearts' content and those of us who were sold on the premise that this game would be more than just an anime visual novel will find that we have something to actually look forward to again.

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Originally Posted by Kozh

Even if Garlemald went into industrial route by selling ceruleum and magitek advancement, they would still lives in inhospitable place. The other nations won't magically gave them a piece of land for them to live in.

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The ceruleum itself improves their quality of life. A place becomes infinitely more hospitable when you have better technology to deal with it. We have people living in this world with a similar level of technology that Garlemald has (or had) in similar areas and no one has to "give them land" so that they're able to live. Garlemald already existed, ceruleum was just a way to thrive.

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

Sometimes I fancy myself knowledgable about FFXIV lore, and then something like this comes along and puts me to shame. I really wish they'd make more of the dedicated world-building visible in the game. Perhaps with this new Codex we have now? I really enjoyed the Field Notes from Bozja, and I think the rest of the game could more than benefit from something similar.



It kind of is a non-issue because the people responsible for those things are no longer here today, so they're not really relevant. I feel we're in a bit of a circular argument where you're saying "look what happens in Eorzea!" and I'm answering that whatever may be happening there has been perpetuated by Garlemald on a much wider, more deliberate and more devastating scale, to which you're responding "but the Eorzeans do it too!" No one is claiming the city states are perfect; their problems have featured prominently in the storyline, and not without some condemnation from the Scions themselves. But this argument of Garlemald being backed into a corner and "making do with what they had" to justify atrocities they committed just doesn't work, and it hasn't done since they progressed from a nation seeking survival to a nation devoted to conquest.

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Yes, and again, its easy to remedy those situations when you literally have a demi-god character who helps solve all of your problems.Whereas with Garlemald they were raised where you either grow strong and defend yourself or someone will come and take everything you hold dear. The city states dont have to worry about that anymore because guess what? anyone who disagrees with them points us at them and asks us to kill them. In the end though i guess it all comes back to Venat. Lets all thank her for creating the wonderful world of war,rape,and illness. Because its just so much better than the unsundered world.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Yes, and again, its easy to remedy those situations when you literally have a demi-god character who helps solve all of your problems.Whereas with Garlemald they were raised where you either grow strong and defend yourself or someone will come and take everything you hold dear. The city states dont have to worry about that anymore because guess what? anyone who disagrees with them points us at them and asks us to kill them..

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So then I guess in the end, Garlemald got exactly what they wanted. You can't advocate a "live by the sword, die by the sword" philosophy and then cry foul when it's YOU that does the dying. Garlemald did what they wanted to do: wage war and rule by strength at all costs, even against their fellow Garleans.

Yeah, Garlemald didn't have the unstoppable super soldier to save the day, but not for lack of trying. Hell, Zenos was actually better than the WOL for most of the plot. But...whoops it turned out that he cared more about war than ruling, too.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Perhaps because one is more intelligent and less preachy than the other? Larsa's ultimate goal was peace. Not regime change. Instead of toppling enemy leaders left and right he worked together with people like Princess Ashe, both of which later became leaders of their respective nations. It made for a far more palatable story than having nation after nation bend over backwards in order to conform to real world ideals - for which Alphinaud is the mouthpiece.

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What enemy leaders has he toppled and regime changes is he supposed to have enforced? Alphinaud has only ever acted as a diplomat between nations/ peoples similarly in the name of peace. They're near enough the same sort of character to me so I'm honestly struggling to understand it.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Yes, and again, its easy to remedy those situations when you literally have a demi-god character who helps solve all of your problems.Whereas with Garlemald they were raised where you either grow strong and defend yourself or someone will come and take everything you hold dear. The city states dont have to worry about that anymore because guess what? anyone who disagrees with them points us at them and asks us to kill them. In the end though i guess it all comes back to Venat. Lets all thank her for creating the wonderful world of war,rape,and illness. Because its just so much better than the unsundered world.

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I mean, "what state would the world be in without the WoL?" is a valid and interesting subject to discuss, but that doesn't change the fact that Garlemald would still be doing those things. You can't equate war crimes with societal flaws regardless of whether the WoL has influenced the city states towards better paths or not.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Perhaps because one is more intelligent and less preachy than the other? Larsa's ultimate goal was peace. Not regime change. Instead of toppling enemy leaders left and right he worked together with people like Princess Ashe, both of which later became leaders of their respective nations. It made for a far more palatable story than having nation after nation bend over backwards in order to conform to real world ideals - for which Alphinaud is the mouthpiece.

So far FFXVI does indeed seem to be what I am looking for, a fantasy story with mature elements that respects the player's intelligence. A revenge plot driven by a protagonist who doesn't have the haircut of a schoolgirl, set in a world with a complex political situation like in Ivalice. Needless to say there is a sector of FFXIV fans who will find that the story goes over their heads, seeing as how there are unlikely to be any Uber Eats scenes or college living moments.

Hopefully now that the writing for FFXVI is done, some of them can rejoin the FFXIV team and save the plot from the current direction it's spiralling down into. A playerbase that needs so many breaks in the tension and action of the plot maybe just maybe would be better off playing a Persona game instead of a Final Fantasy game? Over there they can date and hang out with friends to their hearts' content and those of us who were sold on the premise that this game would be more than just an anime visual novel will find that we have something to actually look forward to again.

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Yeah, I'm cautiously optimistic when it comes to FFXVI. FFXV wasn't free of development issues but it didn't lack for consequences, Ardyn proved to be a fascinating character and the playable characters were likeable enough. I'm also eagerly awaiting FFVII: Rebirth as well as Dragon's Dogma 2. I have a strong hunch that they'll follow the trend of creating immersive game worlds with consistent world building and a healthy balance of grit and lighter notes.

I think Elden Ring and Stranger of Paradise have also shown that there's still plenty of people who like a bit of grit and edge to their games. The fact that even Estinien of all characters has been reduced largely to 'comic relief' is bitterly disappointing and almost makes me glad that so many interesting characters in this game have essentially been hidden away in side quests or forgotten entirely.

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

What enemy leaders has he toppled and regime changes is he supposed to have enforced? Alphinaud has only ever acted as a diplomat between nations/ peoples similarly in the name of peace. They're near enough the same sort of character to me so I'm honestly struggling to understand it.



I mean, "what state would the world be in without the WoL?" is a valid and interesting subject to discuss, but that doesn't change the fact that Garlemald would still be doing those things. You can't equate war crimes with societal flaws regardless of whether the WoL has influenced the city states towards better paths or not.

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I mean, i can and i did. In the end everywhere sucks in 14. It's just who got lucky to have the super speshul character on their side. In the end it was the city states. The garleans got the short end of the stick and were manipulated from the start. Again, blame Venat not them.

As I've said a few times in relation to Hydaelyn, "but this was the best/only way" and "we had no choice" are the go-to moves that are almost always used when it comes to making apologisms for committing atrocities. That applies equally to the atrocities committed by Venat and the atrocities committed by Garlemald.

When it comes to character construction in fiction, allowances for sympathy can be made based on an individual's psychology or emotional circumstances. But as far as I can tell, Varis's primary psychological motivation - Varis who grew up within a palace as royalty - was having a massive chip on his shoulder because of the lingering complex about the grandfather who made him feel inadequate, and wanting to legitimize the nationalistic, persecution-complex propaganda he grew up with that he's fully aware was actually the deliberate product of a malicious Ascian.

Which I think is great. I love Varis's sheer pettiness and singlemindedness about spiting his grandpa for the sake of spiting his grandpa because he hates him that much. It's grade-A black comedy and makes his ultimate fate at his own son's hands sort of poetic, after a fashion.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Which I think is great. I love Varis's sheer pettiness and singlemindedness about spiting his grandpa for the sake of spiting his grandpa because he hates him that much. It's grade-A black comedy and makes his ultimate fate at his own son's hands sort of poetic, after a fashion.

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Oh, Varis is absolutely wonderful in his sort of petulant, Hermes-esque fashion as the sort of person that made the bulk of his own problems. As a character--taking his family situation into consideration--I find him fascinating, but the guy couldn't rule his way out of a paper bag.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

So then I guess in the end, Garlemald got exactly what they wanted. You can't advocate a "live by the sword, die by the sword" philosophy and then cry foul when it's YOU that does the dying. Garlemald did what they wanted to do: wage war and rule by strength at all costs, even against their fellow Garleans.

Yeah, Garlemald didn't have the unstoppable super soldier to save the day, but not for lack of trying. Hell, Zenos was actually better than the WOL for most of the plot. But...whoops it turned out that he cared more about war than ruling, too.

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Looking back on things, up until the end, the Garleans always had someone as strong or stronger than the WoL but still lost.

Nael was backed by a demi-god and beat us down in cutscenes until we ended up defeating her but she still succeeded in bringing her god to life and destroyed a whole continent.

Gaius was pretty evenly matched with the WoL, beat the crap out of the Scions in his 1.0 introduction cutscene, and it took Hydaelyn wasting almost all of her energy she had left in order for us to beat him. Under Solus, he was the Garlean's WoL equivalent who conquered multiple city-states and brutally put down the first rebellion in Rabanastre.

Zenos was much stronger than the WoL and had multiple opportunities to kill us but didn't because he's an insane person. Under Varis, he was also the Empire's fix-it guy like the WoL and went to Ala Mhigo and Doma to put down rebellions much like Gaius. If he was actually competent, didn't kill his own officers, didn't purposefully create rebellions in order to fight strong people, killed us when he had the chance, and wasn't an Ascian puppet like his predecessors, we would have had a different story.


Garlemald didn't lack for extremely strong individuals. They just didn't have the protagonist on their side and were written to be the bad guys.


Our character and the players' first experience with the Garlean Empire is with the Garlean-generated Calamity and multiple invasions as well as killing a bunch of our NPC friends. Being threatened with death the whole game, having no interaction at all with normal Garleans besides their soldiers who are doing the aforementioned death threatening, and siding with the shadowy, scheming ghosts who laugh maniacally and talk about resurrecting their dark god while also teaching antagonistic tribes to summon their own gods which gave the Garleans "reason" to invade in the first place doesn't exactly make one want to help you. It's difficult to sympathize with a bully no matter how tragic their backstory is and especially less so when that tragic backstory happened 600 years ago.

But WoL and the Eorzean Alliance still came in and decided to help the Garlean survivors out of the destruction of their own making after they were defanged and weren't in a position to do anything anymore.